Our Lovely Artwork: Chapter One

Grant County's Worst Serial Killer. . . .

It all started when we came upon a derelict barnhouse. We received a call from someone out on the edges of Grant, moving into the territory of Greenville. They told me it was outside our jurisdiction– that it was a job for the police department two towns over to deal with. Lazy sons of bitches, I called them, and I ended up going out there by myself. I was almost certain that I would be chewed out by my supervisor afterwards, but I didn’t care. I was a younger member within the force back then, and maybe the others had become tired from being swamped with so much work, or maybe they had grown jaded by the uptick in crime in recent years. Whatever the case, a few others and I agreed to leave to check it out on our own. Back when more people gave a rat’s ass about what went on in this county.

We pulled up to the farm as soon as we could, our flashlights scanning the area as evening was turning to night. There was no sound except for the light swish of the wind blowing through the grass and cruising along the soil, untouched by crops for ages. It made the atmosphere all the more intense. Were we too late? Has something horrible already come to pass?

We had truly no idea how horrible it would be.

We eventually came upon the rickety barn, the wood creaking as the wind passed over it. Derrik, Erin, and I took quite a while to push open the sticky barn doors, which refused to move in their old age. Perhaps it was some kind of spiritual sign, because what was inside immediately hit us, not the sight, but instead the smell. The intense scent of rotting wood and flesh, paired with the pungent scent of half-dried blood, was enough to make a man tear up. But more peculiar were the sounds– there were the sounds of grunting and snorts coming from the inside, definitely not of a Human origin.

And when pressing forward into the lair of decay, there it was: the body of a man, spread and pinned up to the barn wall. He was particularly well-dressed, with a freshly-shaven face that had since writhed into an expression of pure pain. The top half of him adorned a torn suit and a tie that had since been tattered into pieces. I say top half because that was all that was left, minus the head, with everything below the gut down completely gone, save for a few dangling pieces that hung loose from the opening where his hips originally were.

Below him was a pit of pigs, freely roaming the barn and blissful, unable to comprehend the horror above them. There were many breeds– Berkshire, Chester White, Duroc, Hampshire– all of which were certainly not of this place. This place had been shut down for years, and all the animals within were more than certainly transported away by the owners and others involved. That was far from the only suspicious thing here.

Not long after we made the grueling discovery, the GPD ushered in. The Greenville police weren’t all too thrilled to have us here, but it was hard for them to argue with me. A man who wasn’t afraid to get yelled at by the boss was a hard man to convince to let things go. After photos of the crime scene, we had to climb up the rickety steps to retrieve the body. I was almost certain that I would fall through, and at one point, I felt the wood crack beneath me. I had plummeted into a stack of hay, making the fall marginally better, except for a few pricks across my arm from the unkempt hay and a few wood splinters. But we eventually were able to pull the man down from his partially crucified position.

The victim was a man named Richard Carlson, a local politician who was planning to run for Mayor later this year. He had made quite a few political enemies, not because his ideals were necessarily bad, but because he was very combative against other candidates. He was a cutthroat competitor, homing in on any and all dirt or unpopular opinions his opponents had and confronting them publicly. He was a man who knew what he wanted and did not make it easy for anyone to take it away from him. But to think that anyone in our or Greenville’s jurisdiction would go to lengths like this to kill him and to make a show of it in this way rather than just quietly putting him away was more than unbelievable, especially to me. There was absolutely something deeper here.

And my suspicions were confirmed with something that was found up in the attic. Covered by a layered tarp that had been gently draped was a collection of china-like dolls. Their skin was smooth and pristine compared to everything around them, though there were many slim cracks along the shining ceramic. There were four of them– among them was a tall woman with a long flowing dress and a sunhat. There was an older man sitting in a chair with a billowing pipe, a plain vest, and a prominent Stetson on his head, along with two twin boys, both dressed in overalls over plaid shirts. All laundered, perhaps even directly out of the box for this very occasion.

And when I walked over to these china statuettes, I was most unsettled by the eyes. They were shining, indicating moisture. And their form, their sunkenness, their naturality… they looked real. As if plucked from the sockets of those that they resembled.

And then the old man’s eyes moved, shifting towards me as I was inspecting them closer.

All of a sudden, I collapsed backwards, left startled and hyperventilating in the face of what I was witnessing here. The other officers in the room, confused, looked to the statues. A few of them caught the movement of more eyes before all of them centered directly on me.

“A-Am I fucking hallucinating?!” I asked. “Please tell me this is just me!”

“No, son,” one of the Greenville officers said. He was an older gentleman, but even he was being rocked by this.

“These… aren’t any ordinary statues.”

“That’s the rest of the Carlson Family.”

I’ve been keeping an eye on this whole case, even when I was told to leave it alone. “This is Greenville’s case,” the sergeant told me. I didn’t say anything during the dressing down I took after leaving that farmhouse. I pretended to listen to the bullshit he spewed in my face about how unprofessional this was. And maybe he was right. But while he spoke, all I could think about were the eyes of those statues– those people. And the silent pleading that came from their faces spoke to me, not calling for me to save them or to find who did this. No. There was nothing but pain and sorrow, and the desire to have that pain taken away. It made me sick just having to replay that moment over and over again, as if I had become part of that inhumane art piece this psychopath had created.

All of the Carlsons were still alive except for Richard himself. They weren’t literally turned into china dolls, but instead, the material had been placed over their flesh. They had all been paralyzed; how, I don’t have all the details, but it was enough to ensure they were still throughout the whole point that they were being used as the sculptor’s personal art project. They had been sitting there for days, maybe even weeks. It was going to take some time to remove all the material from them, as there were many more layers beneath that need to be cracked through without hurting the family. I’ve been watching closely for the day they’re free of that ceramic prison.

The nights following, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking of their pained stares, the way that their sorrow had melded into my soul, pulling me into the same agony that they must have been feeling. Shallow breathing filled my ears– whether it was there when I first saw the family or not, I can’t even remember anymore. Whether there were muffled screams behind that clay and quartz, I know that wasn’t there, but my mind thought otherwise. And when I opened my eyes, looking out my window, the series of irises appeared and then blinked away again, leaving me startled and groaning in my fear.

Then one night, after the same scene had played out in my mind again, I jumped up from my bed in a cold sweat while breathing deep and heavy. 1:46.

“... Dammit…”

I rose from my exhausted state, rubbing my eyes as I gazed around the moonlit room. I stood up and walked out to the bathroom, gazing at myself in the mirror in my devastated state. I looked like a mess– sweat dressing my body and tank top, matting along curled hair. I brushed a hand against the side of my tanned cheek, studying myself for some time before throwing some cold water on my face. For a moment, I came to regret what had led up to this point in my life. August Rutherford. A man who thought he was going to change lives for the better, the guy who had been hyping himself up to be the greatest police officer since he was the age of 9. Plenty of people thought I was a naive joke. I was always told, both by family and ‘friends’, that it might not be worth it. That it wasn’t going to be what it was cracked up to be when we were just kids. That I was going to fuck my brain up with the type of depravity that I would see from terrible people. And to an extent, they were right. Especially after today.

But like hell was I going to let this go. Not this one. Not when there was a sick freak like this still out there.

And as if it were some kind of divine, insane joke, I heard a knock at my front door. And then another. Then a louder slam that nearly rattled the whole home. My mind immediately started to race when I heard the sound. Surely no one in their right mind was knocking at my door, not after what I had seen. The paranoia took over at that point, as I rushed out of the bathroom, wet-faced and all, picking up my gun and heading to the front door. I kept my sidearm held up as I looked through the peephole of my front door. No one. I brushed aside my front curtains to see if anyone was in the yard or hiding at the front door. No one. Except, at the corner of the window, I could make out the glint of a box, wrapped up like a present. Confused, I eventually moved back to the door, whipping it open quickly before glancing back and forth to see if anyone was there. I kept looking both ways even after I picked up the package, until I slammed the door behind me.

Afterwards, I breathed out a sigh of relief, despite how tense I still was about the package. After a few moments just staring, wondering what would be inside, whether it be something twisted or just some kind of prank, I eventually worked up the courage to rip it open. Inside, there was a single sheet of paper. On the front was messy handwriting:

When I turned over the page, the gears were starting to turn in my head, and I was left with the most unsettling revelation.

They were there when the bodies were being inspected.

They knew who I was.

And they were taunting me with their crimes.

That’s when I knew for certain that I would find them. No matter what.